Repressive governments, though, are nothing if not resourceful, and they will find ways to create leverage and exploit loopholes in the face of restive populations and revolutionary challenges. States will develop new methods that are more subtle and insidious. One strategy that many will employ is the if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em plan, whereby instead of trying to limit the Internet, they infiltrate it. As we discussed earlier, states stand to gain a significant edge over citizens in the data revolution because of how much of citizens’ information they’ll have access to. If a government is worried about an uprising, it could ramp up its Internet-monitoring efforts by trawling social-media networks to look for vocal activists; impersonating dissidents to lure in and capture others; hacking into and adding misinformation to prominent mobilization websites; commandeering the webcam on a laptop or tablet to listen to and watch a dissident’s actions without his knowledge; and paying close attention to the inflows of money over electronic platforms to identify outside support. Early-stage infiltration might make the difference between a small demonstration and a national rebellion.
Even if the nature of virtual crackdowns changes, however, physical crackdowns will remain a constant in the repressive-state security playbook. Technology is no match for ground-level brutality, as the horrific examples in Syria’s multiyear crackdown have shown. Impossible as it seems in the beginning, the international community can become desensitized to violent and graphic content, even when the flow of nightmarish images on videos and photographs actually increases over time. All told, for those governments that are still trying to protect their credibility and deny such crimes, brutal crackdowns will become a much riskier endeavor in the digital age. Increased visibility through global online platforms does protect citizens, and this will, we hope, become even more the case as tools like facial-recognition software improve. For an army officer, the knowledge that one well-timed picture from a citizen’s handset could identify and shame him internationally—or lead his own government to throw him under the bus—might encourage him to show restraint or even defect. The same could be said for informal civilian militias that engage in violence on behalf of a regime, like the Zimbabwean gangs that fight for Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party.
Instead of infiltration (or at least in addition to it), we expect that many states will adopt a strategy we’ll call virtual containment. To relieve the pressure of an agitated, informed public, states will calculate that rather than deny services altogether, it’s better to crack a window to allow citizens to vent their grievances in public on the Internet—but, more important, only to a certain degree. Regimes in the future will allow some online dissent, whether by reforming the law or simply not prosecuting the speech, but only on their terms, through specific channels they control. After all, giving a Bolivian environmental activist space to complain about the risks of deforestation is unlikely to substantively threaten the strength of the government.
At first glance, the creation of virtual “venting” spaces will seem like a win-win: Citizens will feel a deeper sense of engagement and perhaps a new degree of freedom, while the government will win points for embracing reform (while avoiding or at least stalling an outright rebellion). Perhaps some repressive states will sincerely see the value in reform and offer policy changes without guile. Many won’t; not only would the gestures not be genuine (those governments would be uninterested in citizen feedback), but the state would view such spaces as opportunities for intelligence-gathering. Regimes already understand the strategic value of allowing online activity that can lead to arrests. A decade ago, the Egyptian police’s vice squad would troll chat rooms and Internet forums with false identities to entrap gay citizens, then lure them to a McDonald’s in Cairo to ambush and arrest them.4 In 2011, following the Tunisian revolution, several Chinese dissidents responded to an online call for a Chinese version of the protests in front of popular American chains like Starbucks. The mobilization calls spread throughout Chinese social media and microblogs, at which point the police became aware of them. When activists arrived at the prescribed date and time, they were met with an overwhelming police force that arrested many of them. Had the government crushed this online activity immediately after noticing it, the police would not have been able to follow the virtual activity to find the physical dissidents.
As part of their virtual containment strategies, states will undertake a series of transparency gestures, releasing crumbs but withholding the bulk of information they possess. These states will be congratulated for exposing their own institutions and even their own past crimes. Perhaps a government known for its internal corruption will want to appear to turn over a new leaf by publicly disclosing the graft of its judiciary or of a former leader. Or a regime in a single-party state will release some information that is accurate but not particularly damning or useful, like its health ministry’s budget statements. Designated straw men will emerge to take responsibility and bear the brunt of public anger, and the regime will survive intact. Manufacturing transparent-looking documents and records will not be difficult for these regimes—in the absence of contradictory information (such as leaked original documents), there’s little hope of proving them false.
The real challenge for states that adopt the virtual containment approach will be distinguishing between public venting and real opposition online. Computer engineers use the term “noise” to describe data that can be very loud but does not convey a useful signal. Authoritarian governments will encounter a political version of this as they begin to allow freer online discussion. In open societies, laws regarding freedom of speech and hate speech largely define the boundaries for citizens, but in closed countries that lack legal precedents for allowable speech, the government is operating somewhat blindly. It will be very difficult for states to determine the intent behind people’s words online—if they’re not known dissidents, have no ties to opposition groups and don’t stick out in any particular way, how does a government newly committed to open dialogue respond without going too far? This unknowable quality will make digital noise the big wild card for authorities as they struggle to first assess and then react. Getting it wrong, by overreaction or underreaction, could be lethal for a regime. Neglect of an online swell could turn it into an off-line storm, and harshly cracking down on online banter could give a nascent online movement with no real momentum something to rally around.
There are a number of present-day examples of state overreaction to online content, though none have yet resulted in revolution. Two examples from Saudi Arabia in 2011 stand out, and they suggest a model for the escalation path we will see in the future. The first involved a group of conservative clerics who, angered by the Saudi king’s decision to grant women the right to vote in the 2015 municipal elections, immediately retaliated against a group of women who had participated in a Women2Drive Campaign (during which several women openly defied Saudi law and got behind the wheel). The clerics decided to make an example of one of the women and sentenced her to ten lashes. As news of her sentence spread, ordinary Saudis took to the Internet to protest and stand up for her, sharing the news far beyond the country’s borders. The virtual retaliation of hundreds of thousands of people both in and outside of Saudi Arabia led the government to revoke the decision less than twenty-four hours later. In this instance, the Saudi king’s quick reaction stemmed a rising tide, but his very responsiveness suggests a genuine state concern about the threat posed by clamorous online mobs.